Great Escape Games is planning on having a LOTR tournament this weekend and I'm thinking of going depending on how life's little games go. I'm thinking of bringing little ued, but much loved models to the event. Given the average size of a 600 point force is 39 models I've decided to go outside my comfort zone.

Not a powerhouse force, but it has a strong combat hero in Burdur especially if the Wight gets a piece of the action (via paralyze). The cavalry gives me mobility and a mounted archery threat. They're aren't the best cavalry int he game, but they give the force a much needed Strength 4 bite. The spectres allow me to manuever the enemy into traps and out of support positions as needed. Bodyguards are a problem, but once I deal with the lynchpin heroes that ability goes away. Their Terror ability will also help to dictate when and where I'm enegaged.

Problem forces will be goblin hordes due to Fury, but everyone has that problem. Dwarves with Khazad Guard are also problematic, but they are vulnerable to paralysis and a paralyzed Khazad Guard is as good as dead. Elves are a problem as well and I really don't have a good answer for them other than to trust to luck and play aggressively.

The force did fairly well all things considered. For a first time out with a relatively new force I think it did well enough. There are some things I will consider changing if I want to play this in a more competetive environment.

Round one I hit a Gondorian force led by Faramir, Damrod, Beregrond and a gerneic captain on a Moria table for Lords of Battle. I deployed horribly, but other than that my force played well. My cavalry had to duck and run for cover from the Gondorian rangers which were pelting anything they could see. I managed to minimize losses and get my infantry into Balin's Tomb with the xcavalry hiding behind it. At this point my spectres came into their own. Despite having a horn blower on the Gondorian side of the battle I was able to draw enough models into killing range to trap and kill them. The Spectres wounding on fives came as a shock to my opponent, but his FV of 3 made it harder for me to win fights. So I resorted to engaging orcs in the fight to give me a chance at winning the tied combats. Buhrdur was unable to get to any heroes in this Scenario so no regenerated Might points, but Faramir was having the same problem. My Wight didn't do much, but he did dismount (through paralysis) a charging cavalryman and forced Faramir to spend all of his Will and two Might to resist the same fate. After the dust cleared we had managed a tie with 14 points a piece. An impressive feat for a sceanrio where ties are extremely difficult to pull off.

Round two was the Reconnoitre rewrite. I was facing an all infantry force and a new player (I was her something like her fourth opponent). So I thought that with my force and given the scenario I had it in the bag. Until i did the math and realized that she had me badly outnumbered and with her deploying only in one corner she would have the ability to get more models off the table than I could despite my cavalry advantage. So I was going to be forced to fight her Isengard Uruk-hai after all. Of course I came to this realization only after I had already placed two of my three warbands. So Buhrdur was forced to run straight into the Isengard mob and do his best to stall them. An easy task I thought given the Spectres and the average courage of a Uruk-hai. Until I remembered the Shaman (right about the time she cast Fury) and then I realized I was going to get creamed if I didn't throw my cavalry into the fray to try and slow down those Uruks. It was a relatively long game as I had to walk one of my infantry groups off the table to win and while it was unopposed it was still going to take eight turns (nine when you count the one turn delay due to the reinforcements rule). Half of her warbands showed up on the first turn with another coming each turn following. Archery was pretty much ineffectual and my Spectres couldn't affect her force so I just marched Buhdur into her line and took it on the best I could, while the majority of my cavalry swung around the center to hit the Uruks from the flank and rear.I managed to tie up her fighting line by winning a lot of my fights in the initial rounds, but a few key losses and numbers started to get the better of my line and she burst through my thin wall with a heroic combat and by creating ever widening breaches. My cavalry did its best to batter the Uruk's, but eventually they got caught standing and started dying themselves. Luckily I had sent a few cavalry off the table earlier so I had three points in the board. Then Buhrdur fell giving her three points and soon my force was borken giving her another three points. Luckily my gambit had paid off and her Uruks were farther from the table edge than my spectres and orcs. The danger for me was that I was broken and therefore going to erode to 25% very fast. I managed to get my first warband off the table for another 13 points which when coupled with my combat losses that turn ended the game with her still one turn from getting a model off the table.Halfway through the match I realized that she had been only moving her models 5 inches a turn. After watching her move a couple more models after I made that observation I realized it was how she was measuring her moves (back of model to front of model) so she was losing the entire width of her base in movement. It obviously helped me out in the long run, but early on I thought she was doing it on purpose until I studied how she was moving her models. Ultimately win for me.

Round three I was scheduled to face off one of the younger local players with yet another Isengard Uruk-hai force, but he had to leave early so I got to face Gary's dwarves instead. Not a bad fight in my opinion until I learned the sceanrio was Domination. I have yet to win a game of Domination with the warband rules. Par for the course saw me make a deployment error with my cavalry. The fight was intense and was going my way for the early part of the battle. Then I made the mistake of trying to do a Heroic combat with Buhrdur. You'd think I'd eather learn not to do them or at least start winning a few of them. We both rolled a five, we both had the same fight value so both had to spend a Might to get a six. This meant we wne to roll off and I lost. End result two Might points spent for absolutely no gain. From that point on Gimli, the Shield Bearer and Dain started racking up kills. I still managed to batter the dwarves with the Khazad guard dying the fastest (I love Spectres). My cavalry managed to get behind the dwarves and into some archers which initially went down easily. Once I was out of Might my cavalry got ground into paste and my force broken. I had a couple of turns where I had a chance to pull out a win, but after a couple of turns of failed courage tests that evaporated. I lost badly.

All in all a good weekend of gaming. I had three relaxing and fun games. All of them were challenging for one reason or another. I am tempted to reforge the force as Buhrdur (or any troll hero for that matter) are lousy combat leaders for me, but I like the models and I have no other force where Buhrdur will fit in so well. My cavalry worked well, but I was not deploying them effectively. Better deployment in round one and three world have made a world of difference for me.

I did manage to win best painted. Go figure. So all that work I did the night before and the morning off paid off after all. Half of my models weren't finished Friday morning before I went to work. By Saturday morning when I was leaving they were painted, shaded, highlighted and completely based.

It's really interesting to see how this force performed. I have toyed with a version of it too (on paper, that is). I really like the idea of using that many specters and supporting them with orcs. Who would you use instead of Burhdur?

What is it about the Domination scenario that seems to trip you up? Same thing each time? or just bad luck?

There really isn't a good choice for Angmar. I choose a combat hero by using Buhrdûr. A wraith would have been a better choice for most of the scenarios, but there are no generic wraiths native to Angmar, though I suppose I could use a lower power Witch King. At 110 points he's not that potent a combat threat, but the spectres improve a bit.

Domination is tough for me since my opponent can usually defend and I always seem to take a beating trying to dislodge them from the objectives. Gary choose an interesting gambit when he placed his two objectives on the same side I had paced one of mine. He won the deployment gamble and thus started the game defending three objectives and threatening a fourth. In every encounter so far I have been broken before my opponent and this is usually a bad thing in this scenario. The game ends far too late for me to capitalize on any numerical superiority I had on each objective when we entered end game.